Biological fluid specimens are useful for diagnostic testing purposes and some biological fluid specimens, such as urine and saliva, are relatively easy to acquire as compared to blood or spinal fluid collection. Testing and analysis of urine and saliva are beneficial for determining, for example, kidney and bladder function, hormone levels, therapeutic drug levels, metabolisms, dehydration, and the detection of drugs-of-abuse.
Biological fluids for the prescribed analysis are often collected at the physician's office or at a clinic and then sent off site for the analysis. The patient is often times given a vial or container having a closure for collecting and sealing the biological fluid. Often the vial includes a safety, or tamper-proof, component particularly for use with the collection of a biological fluid for a drug-of-abuse analysis.
Typically, biological fluid specimens are collected in amounts that exceed those required for a particular analysis and only a sampling of the biological fluid specimen is necessary. Therefore, each vial containing a separate biological fluid specimen for analysis must be opened, or decapped, the sampling transferred to an analysis vessel, and the vial recapped for storage or disposal. Some automated systems have been developed for the decapping/recapping of the vials; however, there remains the need for a fully automated process that can decap multiple vials, transfer the sampling of biological fluid to multiple analysis vessels, and recap the vials in an efficient manner.